I’ve spent 6 years in the army, and the most important thing any soldier relies on is training. Be drilled to the core of your bones ensures that in highly stressful situations, and you do not get more stressful than in combat, you do not act impulsively or irrationally. As it is instinctively ingrained into your brain, you can very quickly draw on your knowledge to make correct decisions. It also ensures that you can rely on your mates and they can rely on you so that the whole of the organisation runs effectively with the least chance of casualties.
Cyber defence is not much different from an operational perspective. Although we’re not talking of immediate life and death here, the survival of a company could well rely on your responses of a cyberattack. Not being prepared is the most stressing issue for any CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) in any organisation.
With budgets being ever tightened, there are choices to be made. Most often, soft skills training will be the first on the budget chopping block and cybersecurity training is unfortunately seen as part of a “soft-skill” instead of a strategic cyber defence mechanism.
Humans as cyber soldiers
As much as technology is able to defend against malicious attacks, the weakest link will often be humans. This is where psychology and training comes into play. Being able to react on events, whereby the decision is based on a cognitive experience, far outweighs the risks of impulse decisions. Impulse responses are not assessing any markers that could flag a threat whereas cognitive responses are filtering what is learned and drilled into people’s brains.
Allowing employees to train on these markers and deploy responses based on what it learned, will significantly strengthen a company’s risk-profile. It is for this reason that cyber defence training should be incorporated in career planning and annual performance reviews. After all, having a well trained staff provides a much better corporate efficiency and given you a significant advantage in undermining criminal intents by applying a cognitive response on imposing threats.
Drill instructors
These are the people that have gone through the walks of life, when it comes to experience, knowledge and training capabilities related to their work. They are able, as no other, to transfer this onto people and bear a huge responsibility the right knowledge is transferred at the right time at the right place.
In cyber war-fare there isn’t much difference. Having your employees trained with up-to-date content is paramount to ensure your company is as prepared as possible to fend off cyber criminals.
Training material
Being educated with outdated material is not only counterproductive but also may cause a false sense of security. Education in today’s online world is an ongoing process and needs to be updated and maintained across the organisation. It takes dedicated “drill-instructors” to collect, compile, distribute and monitor the ongoing change in the cyber threat landscape and provide you with the information and training in a consumable way.
KnowBe4
EvL Consulting partners with KnowBe4 who are these “drill-instructors” and provide you and your employees with the tools and knowledge to be proactive and defend against threats that target the “human factor” of your IT environment.
Click here to know more about how EvL Consulting and KnowBe4 can help you with keeping your organisation in top shape when it comes to cyber security preparedness and start with our Automated Security Awareness Program, ASAP!
Kind regards,
Erwin van Londen
